Years ago I heard a preacher say that “a sermon prepared in the mind of the preacher only reaches the mind of the listeners. But a sermon prepared in the mind, and in the heart and life of the preacher reaches the heart and life of the listener too”.

This means that some sermons should probably wait. You may have prepared meticulously through the steps, you understand the text, you have accurately identified the main idea, your message helpfully presents the passage relevantly so that the main idea can be delivered to your listeners. 

In traditional terms, it is a well-prepared sermon that is ready to launch. But maybe it needs to wait.

Why might a sermon need to wait?

The point I am making is fairly obvious. It is not enough to become informed in preparation for preaching. In some way that truth needs to soak into our lives and bring about some level of transformation.

Perhaps you are working on a sermon on prayer, or on financial giving. The problem is, although you understand the biblical teaching on the subject, you are honestly not much of a pray-er or giver.

Postpone the sermon, and with God’s help, let those truths soak into your heart and change your life. Then preach it. Don’t preach yourself (always a temptation after a season of growth), but preach the sermon with genuine conviction.

Practical implications of this truth

I am sure most people would agree with the previous paragraph, in principle. Theoretically that makes sense. But practically? What about the preaching calendar? How can I postpone a sermon mid-series? How can I prepare another sermon at potentially short notice?

The lack of an obvious solution could perhaps be a spur to several partial solutions. Perhaps we need to pray through series of sermons more before we launch into them.

Once in a series it is possible to give less energy to a section in order to come back to it more effectively later. Certainly we shouldn’t be starting our sermon planning on Saturday evening – that leaves no wiggle room for anything.

Somehow we need to break patterns of urgency that leave us constantly playing catch-up and lacking in the buffer capacity to look ahead, to pray, to plan, to ponder.

Bottom line . . . it is easy when preaching regularly to lose sight of a fundamental reality of ministry. Busy ministry schedules can leave us scraping along from one deadline to the next.

At its core, ministry involves the privilege of being first in line to be taught, rebuked, corrected and trained by the Word of God. If that has gotten lost in the shuffle, it is time to confront your current version of the shuffle.

Peter Mead is mentor at Cor Deo and author of several books. This article first appeared on his blog Biblical Preaching.